Consider This from NPR - Sen. John Fetterman On His Return To Congress

Episode Date: April 21, 2023

Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) is back at work on Capitol Hill after taking leave to seek treatment for clinical depression. It is rare for a sitting politician to publicly discuss their mental health. But Sen. Fetterman sat down with NPR's Scott Detrow to talk about what the past few months have been like and what comes next.In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR comes from NPR member stations and Eric and Wendy Schmidt through the Schmidt Family Foundation, working toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all. On the web at theschmidt.org. Democratic Senator John Fetterman first entered the public spotlight long before he got to Washington. For 13 years, he was the mayor of Braddock, a small, struggling steel town in western Pennsylvania. Then, in 2019, he became Pennsylvania's lieutenant governor. And in 2021, he announced a run for U.S. Senate. Never taking a single person for granted.

Never taking a single place for granted. I'm John Fetterman, and I approve this message. Fetterman went on to win the Democratic Senate nomination in the battleground state. It was the most important race on the map last year, the one everyone expected would decide control of the entire Senate. And Fetterman was running against another high-profile candidate, TV personality Mehmet Oz. The most expensive Senate race in the country, John Fetterman versus Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania. Well, the eyes of the nation are on Pennsylvania's U.S. Senate race.

Republican Oz and Democrat John Fetterman are in a social media war. It was an intense campaign, part of a very intense 12 months for Fetterman, because in May 2022, he suffered a stroke, which he later said nearly killed him. He was sidelined from campaigning for two months while he recovered. When he returned to the campaign trail, Fetterman struggled to communicate. His ability to do the job became the focal point of Republican attack ads.

Fetterman's struggles during the one televised debate made many Democrats worry he'd lose. And he would never make that choice to fight for families here in Pennsylvania. But Fetterman ended up winning by a comfortable margin. That victory gave Democrats a true majority in the Senate. Do you solemnly swear that you will support and defend the Constitution of the United States? For the satisfaction you might expect one to feel being sworn in as the state's junior senator? I do.

Congratulations, Senator. It just wasn't there at all, according to Fetterman. Like, I felt lost, you know, and I wasn't elated. I wasn't happy about it. ...that Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman has checked himself into the hospital. He will continue getting voluntary treatment on a voluntary basis. Senator Fetterman has experienced depression on and off. In February, he checked himself into Walter Reed National Medical Center to receive treatment for clinical depression.

After a 44-day stay, his doctor said his depression was in remission. And the freshman senator from Pennsylvania is now back at work on Capitol Hill, even chairing a subcommittee hearing this week. Thank you, Senator. And now I now recognize Senator Warnock for five minutes. Thank you so very much, Mr. Chair. It's great to see you back. Consider this. It's unusual for a sitting lawmaker to speak publicly about getting treatment for mental health. I sat down with John Fetterman in his Senate office for his first extended interview since his return to Congress. That interview, after the break.

From NPR, I'm Scott Detrow. It's Friday, April 21st. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. Support for NPR and the following message come from Carnegie Corporation of New York, working to reduce political polarization through philanthropic support for education, democracy, and peace. More information at carnegie.org.

It's Consider This from NPR. This week marked another milestone in the unlikely career of Senator John Fetterman. It was his first week back in Congress after he took leave to seek medical treatment for clinical depression. I sat down with Fetterman for his first extended interview since returning to the Capitol. His team had decorated the spare, windowless temporary space assigned to new senators with, among other things, posters of Philadelphia sports mascots Gritty and The Fanatic. The closed captioning Fetterman uses to process speech was displayed on a big-screen TV. It was also his first day wearing brand new hearing aids. And Fetterman, having recently learned that he can vote without donning a suit,

was comfortable in his trademark Carhartt hoodie and gray gym shorts. I asked him how he was feeling since being back. I can't tell you how moving it was to me. Now, I would have been blown away if it was just warm, but a standing ovation and hugs. And I'm so grateful to our colleagues and to Leader Schumer also, so that I was able, it made it possible for me to be there, setting the tone from the top down that either me or anyone in this kind of situation, it's one of us, and we need to provide the opportunity to get healthy. How different did it feel coming into the Senate, being in the Senate this week, compared to when you first arrived in January? It was just a big smile. I've really missed being here. When I was in the throes of depression, to be 100% honest, I was not the kind of senator that was deserved by Pennsylvania. I wasn't the kind of partner that I, to my wife,

Giselle, or to my children, you know, Carl, Grace, and August, it wasn't the kind of father. One of the best sentences that I ever heard in my life was my doctors just sitting when we were in a meeting. And they said, John, we believe your depression is in remission. And at first I didn't believe that. And now my depression is in remission. And that's why coming back to home and coming back to the Senate has been joy. You've said you want to use this moment to talk about mental health, to talk about depression. Can you tell somebody who's maybe lucky enough to have not had to deal with depression what it felt like in those moments early on in the

Senate term? You've talked about feeling empty, being sworn into office. It should be this big moment in your life. And you said it didn't feel that way at all. Yeah. You know, I'm grateful to have the ability to try to pay it forward. And I would just say this, I try to be kind of, I want to be, say the kinds of things that I would have heard years ago that got me, you know, into action. And I would tell anybody listening to this is if you suffer from depression or you have a loved one, you know, please let them know. Please know that you don't need to just suffer without treatment. If I had done that years ago, I would not have had to put my family with that if I had gotten help. When you were dealing with depression for so long,

how would you characterize how you were personally dealing with it? Were you denying that it was even there? Or were you saying, this is here, this is a real thing, but I'm going to push through it, I'm going to ignore it. I was so depressed that I didn't even realize how I was depressed. I didn't even understand it. To me, that just became the new normal. I wasn't realizing I wasn't eating. I wasn't eating. I didn't realize that I wasn't really drinking much. I dropped 25 pounds and sometimes would say incoherent things. I knew something was wrong. They knew that I wasn't right. But even at that moment, I was still kind of,

I pushed back about it too sometimes saying, are you sure? I don't really need it. I'm good. No, no, no, I got it. Because then when it was really come to that choice like you need to i'm going to walk in here and and sign myself in i thought for a second i'm like oh no no wait a minute i i i'm fine all right never mind i got this i got this i got this i got this i'm noticing

that you're you're being really reflective and looking back, saying, I wasn't doing this the right way with my family. I wasn't approaching this job the right way. I was ignoring this. What did you learn about yourself during the six weeks in the hospital that you didn't know before? For my family, it was hard because I was ashamed. Yeah. I was ashamed.

Yeah. I was ashamed. And that was probably the single hardest thing in all that is when I think about that. Did you talk to your family about those feelings and what did they tell you? The day I was signed in to the hospital was my son's 14th birthday. And I think back when I was 14 years old, what if this would have been what happened to me? But the only thing he wanted to do was he just wanted to go to a restaurant.

And my wife was on his way to take him there, and they all had to turn it around yeah and my fear is is that his birthday will you remember as the day that dad was was signed in and but in the six in the six weeks was about me kind of redeeming trying to redeem myself yeah you know in their eyes and and they were never harsh on me. They just created a path to a safe place. But I felt like I didn't deserve to have a safe place there. You still sound very hard on yourself.

No, no. I wasn't hard on me because the family was put through a really difficult, this is really hard for myself. My oldest son had a conversation where he was having a hard time understanding why, Dad, why aren't you depressed? Like, you ran and you won. And I tried to explain to them, like, you know, geez, you know, Carl,l like i had a stroke and and you know all of these ads and everything and uh and he's like but but aren't we enough aren't aren't we enough and and when when when when he asked aren't we enough?

He said that they should be, that they are enough. But at that time, I wasn't able to not feel this kind of depression. And those six weeks was, for me, was like every week was about me trying to work back enough to be worthy. Yeah. I want to use the rest of the interview to talk about what comes next and talk about how you're going to approach your job now that you're back in the Senate. And I wanted to start by just taking a moment to ask you about some of the criticism and also some of the concerns. You said yourself a moment ago that when you were depressed, you didn't feel like you were the senator that Pennsylvania needed.

I'm paraphrasing. But I mean, the central attack against you during the campaign was you couldn't do the job due to your health problems. Then you got here and you had to spend six weeks in the hospital. And I'm wondering, do you feel yourself any extra pressure at this moment to say, hey, Pennsylvania, I'm here to represent you? Yeah, certainly. But I bet you some of those people that are criticizing me know somebody or they might be someone that faces depression in their lives as well. And I just always try to tell people by saying it's not a democratic or a republican area it's it's a human it's humanity and you know there's people from no matter where

you live no matter what your political views are is is that that you suffer from depression or you know somebody there and and uh you know what a critic of me was? It was my wife. She said, you have depression. You should do something to it. And she was right. Just because I thought every night when I was laying in bed, when I was in the hospital, I was like, what if I just would have done something about this before? And I could kick myself.

And I guess think about my family wouldn't have put through it. And even, again, my constituents. But right now, now that I am back, to me, I'm really committed to paying it forward on all of that and letting people know. To anyone that has any of these feelings, you know, there's a path and you can get better. Senator John Fetterman, Democrat from Pennsylvania, back in the United States Senate, thank you so much for speaking with us. Thank you. Yes. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Scott Detrow.

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